If You Only Knew
by calliope-love
Summary: There's a lot that Liam tries not to show. Set during the party; can be seen as friendship or pairing.


Author announcement: This has nothing to do with anything, but since this is my first fic here in a long, long while, I thought I should mention - my silence the past several months has been due to a death in the immediate family. Those of you who pay attention to my livejournal know more of the details. But I'm still here, and still in the fandom, and don't worry about me. I have a lot of fic to catch up on, so hopefully you'll hear more of me soon.

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><p>All that saves him when he wakes up is the fact that the March Hare was still paying attention. <em>He saw, he saw,<em> says the Hare, and Liam groans; Xerxes was never supposed to see. _He saw and he's angry and lost, lost, lost -_

Liam might have stayed where he was a few minutes longer if not for that. He might have allowed himself to give up in the face of what had happened to him, even if only for a little while, and take a rest that he deserves perhaps more than anyone else given all the nonsense he has to deal with and smash his way through every single day. Instead he grabs his glasses and hauls himself out of that room, going where his Chain directs him. Liam crawls at first, unsure if he can manage to stay upright, and he curses Xerxes Break every inch of the way.

Was it really too much to ask that Xerxes could have figured it out, in that moment? Really? _Really?_

He'd never meant for it to happen, of course. He'd never meant to make Xerxes stand helplessly by as his dearest friend was torn away from him, unable to lift so much as a finger to stop it. He'd never meant to put himself in that sort of situation so deliberately, and in doing so, let Xerx feel the frustrated anger, the _questions_, the "why, why, how could you do that to yourself, to me, to _me_". Liam has felt enough of those things to know what it's like, and felt them so strongly that he never would have wished it on anyone else. He's sorry for it. He's so, so sorry that Xerxes had to find out firsthand exactly what feelings Liam has to sit on while his best friend flings himself right into the thick of things and comes home with his own blood streaked across his chin.

But he's angry, too. He's angry because he's so tired of _watching_, and he'd wanted so badly tonight to prove to the both of them that he could do more than stand to one side and wait, and look how spectacularly _that_ had blown up in both their faces. He's angry because it seems impossibly unfair that Break should react to this by exploding when Liam works _so hard_ to swallow it down every time he gets the urge to just _scream_ at Break for being so careless with himself.

He's angry because Hare has told him what happened. And although the idea of Xerxes Break standing there so vulnerably, unable to see him - listening for Liam's voice and receiving Fang's - is going to haunt Liam for the rest of his life, it's tempered by the furious awareness that one day Liam is going to call for Break and Break isn't going to reply, and knowing it's coming doesn't make it any easier. Liam has seen people lose other people; he knows a thing or two about grief. He knows that he'll be numb, someday, and that it isn't ever quick, and that for months after Break is gone Liam is still going to be expecting him to pop out from the nearest cabinet any moment. He knows that Break will want him to move on and that he'll try his damnedest to do it but some days it just isn't going to happen, and he knows it's going to hurt like hell, and some days he wants to strangle Break himself and get it over with just so he doesn't have to watch him fall apart so slowly anymore. It already hurts. Every minute of it hurts and it's going to get worse and _knowing it's coming doesn't make it any easier._

And it's all Break's fault, because he's too stupid or stubborn or both to understand just how badly he's hurting everyone who loves him by flinging himself into the middle of everything again and again and again, and Liam is so, so tired of having to hold himself together to allow him to do it.

So he moves when he'd rather rest and he stands when he just wants to fall and he lifts his voice to stop the child while Break is too sick to defend himself, and he can't help but laugh a little after when Xerxes looks at him with that _face_. He'd never expected to see an expression like that on Break - that's why he asks after it - and heaven help him, it's just a little gratifying. Liam is in pain and feeling guilty over what's happened tonight and even as he's laying there bleeding he wants so badly to make everything better for everyone else, because no matter how he hates it sometimes that's just how he is, and if he could erase tonight entirely he would probably do it. He's sorry. He's sorry because he knows he caused some of this and he didn't want it, and the idea that he put Xerxes through something so terrible even for a little while is almost enough to choke him.

But somehow it makes it better that for once in his life, Xerxes Break is wearing his own pain openly where Liam can see it, and as badly as Liam wants to reach out and fix it, fix it, fix _him_, he can't help but think, "See? See? Do you see what you're doing to us all?"


End file.
